Category: Rage

Many people say you should never forgive those who have hurt you. That is not entirely an unwise statement but needs serious reshaping. First and most important, you need to understand yourself. Forgiveness does not mean you erase memory. It also doesn’t mean that memory chases you forever like an enraged beast. We are afraid of forgiving anyone because we do not understand the consequences. Forgiving doesn’t mean that you give in to the kind of person who wounds you over and over again in the same kind of way. It doesn’t mean becoming more vulnerable to attack. Forgiveness does not let you be a victim.

You need to uncover why you surrenders to mistreatment. Even that you seek it out. This compulsion comes from mistreatment during your early years. For example, I had a lying, bloviating father who spoke with fervor and would attack me if I questioned him in any way. Fast forward to adult mistreatment. I tend to give in to people who present themselves as experts and are hurt if I do not agree with them. The more I give into that person the harder it is to stop. I feel inexplicable fear. It is like sliding into emotional, physical and financial hell. It is the hell of my childhood.

Know your wounded inner child. See how the people you allow to wound you resemble the original wounding one. When such a person gets into the I am going to hurt you mood for doing or being this or that, take courage. Force yourself to act courageous. Call attention to what they are doing and if they cannot stop or even do not understand what you say, it is time to leave. Probably for good.

It is like a dog that bites the extended hand. Of you know the dog is a biter, do not extent your hand. Do not reach for the dog in hope the dog has changed. If the assaulting adult seems to like or even love you after you surrender to the kind of wishes which do you some kind of harm, even to your spirit, what kind of love is that? Expecting a close relationship with an assaultive person has nothing to do with forgiveness. It is accepting misery as your lot in life.

You learn how far to go with a person who intends to hurt because they have done it before. Your spirit, your everything will be damaged by surrender. Your boundaries in terms of what you will allow need to be based on experience. Do not apologize for setting limits. Restraint is your right and privilege. Forgive the biter for attempting to bite because they are a biter but do not forget that they bite. A proper distance creates forgiveness. If the attacker will not accept your restraint and attacks you for it, feel free to take your leave. Forgiveness is not slavery.

How many times have I thought about the way we humans (forget sapiens) find ourselves in a fight with other sapiens let alone caught up in an official war? Yes, in this modern era, the big banks, the big money people make the most money out of war and so are always breeding for or starting a fight or pretending most often to have been attacked with the only solution being to attack back.

Putting the the warring banks aside, what about the innate tendency to fight the beings we call enemy. If we look at other animals, the larger ones, they are usually ready to put aside their pleasurable activity, their wandering and eating and screwing, to fight when they feel endangered.

We don’t like to think of ourselves as animals. Animals are below us to be harvested as food or cleared out as interlopers in whatever we have intended for the land we claim to possess. But no, folks, we are of the animal kingdom, Our animal group through breeding carries certain genes which effects our thinking but more often, we are shaped by the social training of our society. If the major theme is “take” what you can, you think you should take. If the social theme is mistrust and defend yourself against imagined enemies, you will carry a gun and likely shoot first.

Other animals remember the ones that have attacked and attempt to avoid them. We humans take an attacking position because we have been attacked and are afraid, but more often because the supposed enemy or the land they dwell on, has something that we want.

Another feature we make much of is the ability to hold grudges; also, to envy those who have “more” than we do. It is advertising that makes us feel needy. Our training leads us to desire and to take. The rich take from the poor within the same society as we have seen in the latest give away tax reduction for the 1 percent. The poor innocent people who do not make decisions are easily persuaded to fight the enemy if only to protect themselves. They do the dirty work for the ones that profit from it.

Those who give labels call us a more advanced species, but looking at the totally destructive outcomes towards which so many of our efforts are directed, is this true? Are we really so advanced? I cannot endorse this label when the direction is our downfall. Would you?

She had a terrible painful dream. She was with her now deceased husband looking young and vital. He was rejecting her for being unloving. Said he didn’t love her anymore. Suddenly she was plunged into her greatest loss which returned her to the grief of childhood with rejecting unloving parents. Then she was on a subway train, in a car with no destination. He got off at a stop and she followed him. He pitied her and gave her a large heart shaped pin and filled with precious stones: rubies and sapphires turquoises. She said, give the pin to the next woman that you love. He didn’t take it.

She awoke in a state of misery. Felt abandoned.

She remembered how she changed into an angry martyr as her husband became increasingly deranged by frontal lobe illness. She treated him with the same hostile, rejecting behavior as her mother regularly did to her. Even her voice changed into that cigarette deep tone of dislike.

She had given into the internalized persona of her hateful mother and critical father, each time to come back to herself and apologize, each time renewed with a husband who said, “I take the good with the bad.” But to mistreat a dying man she became two women, the woman he loved and the one he detested. Oh noooo. Her hateful parent-self was not forgiven as if it ever was. When not experiencing “splitting,” he hated that part of herself and loved the loving. Now the two selves stood apart.

Why did she dream it? Yesterday, she had been critical of her gardener’s aggressive and speech disabled son. He was deliberately disobedient. Took hold of her binoculars and ran off to use them where they could easily drop and break. He banged into her with his water bottle until she yelled at him to stop. She set rules in an angry voice which didn’t work. He enjoyed getting her goat.

The dream was telling her that that the mistreating part of her would never go away. It showed her how it created her greatest loss.

The heart-shaped locket filled with precious jewels was not given to the attacking woman she had become when terrified by his debilitating illness. It was given to the woman she had mostly been before. When she offered it to give to the woman who came next, that woman was herself. It was that part of herself he deeply and completely loved. The pin was heart shaped because it represented his true love for her.

Every dream is trying to tell us what we need to know and do. Every dream attempts to bring us to the land of love.

Get my book Unloved Again today! Email me directly at elangolomb@gmail.com in order to get your signed copy. Hardcover ($25 including shipping) and Paperback ($16 including shipping) versions available. Payment collected via Squareup.com/store/elangolomb..